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Sony accelerates Memory Stick's rate of obsolescence to 50MBps
Only Sony -- the company behind the "Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity" streaming service -- would consider naming its latest flash memory card the "Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX." But once you get past its monumental moniker you'll notice that the 32GB (¥17,000 about $200), 16GB (¥9,000 or $106), and 8GB (¥5,000 / $59) MS-HXB series memory cards boast an impressive 50MB per second transfer rate as tested by Sony. That's a pretty decent jump past Sony's older MS-HXA series of cards and should help keep the few remaining Memory Stick-only devices happily bursting into a future dominated by Secure Digital.
Sony's 32GB Memory Stick Pro-HG Duo HX proves that product naming is hard
What's not to love here? Just look at that handsome blister pack, ready to mince flesh in your enthusiasm to get at Sony's largest and most convolutedly named Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX. The 32GB stick is rated at 20MBps reads or 15MBps writes when using the bundled USB adapter. Imagine, had you purchased pretty much any device other than that Cyber-shot, Handycam, or Alpha shooter from Sony you could have been enjoying 30MBps read/writes from 32GB SDHC class 10 cards. Nope, no availability date or pricing announced, how could that information possibly be useful in a press release?
Is your Memory Stick the real deal?
There are tons of fake Memory Sticks out there, and while some of them do work, many feature less than reliable performance. mavy, a programmer from PSX Reality, has come up with a comprehensive, homebrew method to check if your flash card is a fake. The test won't be fast, and it will involve doing a reformat of the disk, but it does appear to be quite comprehensive.However, I've also heard that there's a poor man's way of checking for the real deal. Go to the PSP's XMB, and have "Memory Stick" highlighted as one of your options. Hit Triangle and then "Information." If MagicGate, Sony's proprietary copy-protection scheme isn't supported, chances are high that you have a fake.[Via PSP3D]
